Boys Will Be Boys - The Story of Sweeney Todd, Deadwood Dick, Sexton Blake, Billy Bunter, Dick Barton et al.

E.S. Turner''s first book, published in 1948, is a wholly original, richly researched and uncommonly insightful study of a somewhat disreputable genre: the ''Boys'' Weekly'' papers commonly known as ''penny dreadfuls.''

''A classic of its kind... [Turner] ploughed through back numbers of the old blood-and-thunder adventure magazines specialising in cliffhanger serials; the young hero would be left hanging over a cliff in a totally impossible situation, which would be easily resolved in the next issue: ''With one bound Jack was free.'' Social history had never been as much fun or, with three extra printings in its first week - such was the demand - as profitable.'' Jonathan Sale, Guardian

''Some people felt that E.S. Turner may have invented a new kind of book - the popular social history, very British, very funny, but written with a glistening elegance.''
Andrew O''Hagan, London Review of Books